Sherlock Holmes – much more than graffiti on your campus walls

I Believe In Sherlock Holmes - Uploaded by Drpepperfan #1 Fan Of Osaka and Trixie

Some days you can just tell something special is about to happen. For me, it was leaving my house late, hungry and slightly disoriented. Something was bound to happen that was out of the ordinary –I could just tell.  When I finally arrived to the lab, in Briggs, I tried to get my experiment started but nothing was going right. I couldn’t find the correct plates, then the gel just wouldn’t polymerize, we were out gloves and I had left my phone at home.

I decided that having breakfast would soothe my nerves, and so I headed for the café in the Sciences Laboratory building. On my way to the apple cinnamon muffin that would make the world right again, something caught my eye on the pillar by the entrance. A short sentence written in pink chalk that just made my day: “I believe in Sherlock Holmes” This was it –the something “out of the ordinary” that I had been anticipating. I stared at the words for a short while, and was surprised by the complete silence that ensued inside of my head. This seemed more complex than the usual graffiti. This was no “Occupy.” This was even more vague in that it had appeared very unexpectedly where the “Occupy” tag used to be, and it seemed entirely out of context. I was also very intrigued because such important declarations about epic detectives are not encountered often enough, and I was not sure where to begin sorting through my confusion. My mind was being challenged, and I was to spend much of the rest of my day mulling over this remarkable mind-bender.

I returned to lab and Googled it.

Imagine my disbelief when the first image I found was of a sentence tagged in yellow that read: I believe in Sherlock Holmes. All of a sudden I was a believer too, and I was instantly very glad to be part of this elite, invisible group of individuals that was stealthily pleading allegiance to one of the greatest mad-scientist-detectives of all times. I imagined secret meetings by candlelight at every new moon. I imagined ancient initiation rituals in a dark classroom in lieu of a catacomb. I wanted to be inducted at all costs.

However, a little more digging very predictably revealed that this was no elite movement at all. Apparently this all started when a TV show called Sherlock got cancelled in the UK.

I Youtubed it.

Their version of Sherlock Holmes, though perhaps more accurate, is very unlike our wild and magnificent Robert Downey Jr. His name is Benedict Cumberbatch (yes), and that is all I will say about that. Benedict’s Sherlock operates in the modern world, which is a nice twist on the usual old London perspective. He has horrendously curly hair and painfully European features, but he somehow pulls it all together to create an absurdly attractive cerebral-gentleman-hero. Furthermore, the timbre of his voice is just incredible and he truly brings to life the kind of Sherlock I had imagined all along. Downey is more of a cowboy Sherlock. There is nothing wrong with that. But Benedict brings along a more powerful, dynamic intellectualism to life in a way that makes the whole “I Believe in Sherlock Holmes” movement make absolute sense. I want them, whoever they are, to put it back on the air, too.

Of course, none of this made up for the fact that my Google search had obliterated my secret society fantasy. What I had taken for a legitimate revival movement had turned out to be the workings of a colossal fan club. Still, my love for Sherlock Holmes is much greater than my general disappointment in the fickleness of the graffiti. I believe in Sherlock Holmes. Join me, won’t you?